


The Novels and Ghosts of Dame Edith Cushing Sharpe

by Vitreous_Humor



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Gen, Gothic, Redemption, World War I, World War II, writing careers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5176406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vitreous_Humor/pseuds/Vitreous_Humor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time only stands still at Crimson Peak. For Edith, there's still years ahead, novels to write, and of course, ghosts to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Novels and Ghosts of Dame Edith Cushing Sharpe

The ghosts of Venice are strange and watery. They cannot speak well, for the dead of Venice are all drowned. Though they might have died of fire, accident or mischief, they belong to the murky canals and the Laguna Venata.

I went to Venice because Alan suggested it, and after my leg healed, there was no reason not to. I was a woman of means, and with no urge to become a Miss Havisham, I left the sanctuary of the convalescent home in Leeds to venture to Italy.

I finally wrote again in Venice. In Leeds, I could only manage to write short letters, curt things to Mr. Ogilvie, the odd response to the gushing of condolences from Alan's sister and mother. It was in Venice where the stinking water and fevered masks fired my brain, and so my first published novel, _The Dark and Drowning Water,_ was born. The brave and orphaned Gillian Hardy narrowly escapes a nasty fate at the hands of her plotting cousins. The critics alluded to my own past, but none were so crude as to draw the lines that I knew acutely and grimly were there to be drawn.

I never saw the ghost in Buffalo at all. Father would never have wanted to frighten me, and so he occasionally made his presence known through the scent of his aftershave, the faint and pleasant aroma of pipe smoke after dinner, a soft chuckle in my ear when I was particularly sharp with yet another over-presumptuous matron who wished to bring me out.

Buffalo was once home, but I slowly came to realize that it never could be again. I felt out of step, as if at any moment, I might meet a younger version of myself, tripping happily along the street with her manuscript under her arm.

My second novel, _Nephilim,_ was universally despised by the reviewers, but it went to a second printing, then a third. A few brave girls, nameless even in their discreet letters, wrote to me to tell me how much it heartened them to see a girl survive her disgrace, to marry and to love even when shadowed with old nightmares. I'm still quite proud of it.

In 1914, the world rocked in its moorings, and during the long years of the war, I knew I was not the only one who saw the dead walking around me.

Alan signed up straight away, as did Eunice's husband. I found an uneasy place in charity and aid work during the first year. Eunice was often at my side, most of our girlish grudges buried. I know her mother regarded me with a wary gratitude, seeing me as the lamb taken in place of her own girl. Wary or not, I was often at their dinner table in that first year.

Then came the call from General Pershing for the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit. I had no experience with the switchboards, but I had good French and Italian. I went to Chaumont, where I sat at the boards ten hours a day, relaying messages in the calm and measured voice that was so natural to me after leaving Cumberland.

Sometimes, a call would come in, and I would hear a hissing eldritch sound that sent chills up my spine. It was no human voice, at least no living human voice. I wondered who was trying to send one last call, who was trying to reach out over the wires to find a listening ear, a last order, a final consolation.

 _The Chambord Papers_ was my first and only mystery. With his secret love for Doyle, Alan liked it very much, and I was fond until they insisted that it required a man's name on the cover.

“Fine, let it be T. L. Cushing,” I snapped.

I knew immediately what I had done, but inspired by some imp of perversity, I let it stand. I hadn't said their names in years, but it didn't mean that they weren't at the back of my mind, haunting me in my darker nights, my weaker dawns.

Alan and I came back from the war, though not to each other. Eunice and her mother tried their hardest to bring us together, but it hadn't worked when I was a headstrong girl, and it still didn't work when I was a stubborn woman. I went to his wedding. His wife was a practical woman, and though we never became great compatriots, I knew she made my dear friend happy. She and I did some suffrage work together.

After the war, I went west. Chicago was all noise and all blood. The dead I saw were all in a hurry, and had no time for me.

I liked the hots and colds of Chicago, the way the city rushed towards the lake and was so quickly and firmly stopped. There were other women like me there, ones who had through choice or chance found themselves somehow outside that safe circle of family and home. We wrote, we quarreled, we laughed, we ate and we made our own lives.

I wrote so much in Chicago, letters, novels, essays, and articles. My beloved Gothics went out of style, and after _The Chambord Papers,_ I never had much else to say about mysteries. Instead I turned to futurism, creating stories about worlds in other times, on other planets. I churned them out by the yard, but I loved them fiercely. I could have worlds with no shadows, victories without blood, anything I wanted and more.

 _The Doors to Yesterday_ was my favorite. For Nellie Carson, the past was a door, not a brick wall. She walked deeper and deeper into the dead generations, and if some of the critics disdained it for my Gothic sensibilities, well, it was where I came from, after all. My dear Nellie danced through time, making no apologies, and when she disappeared, she went with a nod and a wink. That is the one I hope they remember.

I wrote through the lean days of the Depression, a little threadbare, but full and warm. I wrote through the Second World War. We lost both Alan and his son, who was my godson, in battlefields of France. Alan had insisted on going over, and because they needed doctors, even ones over sixty, they allowed it. James, who had written to me ever since he knew how, died at Normandy. I didn't write for a year.

After the war, I was rich again. The old investments were full of munitions money, and I could go where I liked.

I went to London, where the dead cowered from the sound of phantom mortar rounds overhead, but I did not stay long. Instead I took the train to Cumberland, and from there, I went by car to Allerdale Hall.

I was shocked to see that it was nearly the same as when I had left it more than four decades ago. That is, it was still a shambling wreck, but it was a shambling wreck that had a bit of eternity in its walls. I told the driver to keep the car running, and I used a key furnished by my solicitor to unlock the doors.

I was briefly stunned by a vision of a giddy bride carried over the doorstep by a smiling dark-haired man, and I knew that I must be careful. No ghost had ever hurt me, but I could hurt myself so badly if I was not careful.

I followed the strain of soft music to the parlor, and just like before, Lucille did not turn.

“We look to the hills,” she said softly, her voice as thin as skim milk.

“Where does our help come from?” I replied. I had looked it up once, years after. It made me hurt to think of the Sharpes calling for help, brother and sister both.

I listened to her play for a while. The lullaby ended, then started again, as it must have thousands upon thousands of times since 1901.

“Lucille, it's time to go,” I said finally.

“Wherever would I go?” she asked in surprise. “This is Allerdale Hall. This is home, mine and Thomas's.”

She sounded a little like one of the heroines in my stories. I wondered briefly if there was something of Lucille in Hester Westerfield, who had lived in darkness until she found a seed of moonlight. The difference was that Hester had escaped her darkness, and Lucille hadn't yet.

If I loved Thomas, I had to love her a little as well. I took a deep breath and walked a little closer. Her shoulder blades were like polished knives. If she turned, her face would be a black ruin.

“Thomas isn't here anymore,” I said. “He's gone away, and you must as well.”

Her voice grew fretful.

“Oh, but I can't leave Allerdale,” she said. “He'll never know where to find me if I leave. This is home. This is where we live. He'll come back to me soon. He always does.”

“No, Lucille. Not this time. This time, you must go find him.”

Her hands stilled on the keys. Looking over her shoulder, I could see that the piano was rotted through, the strings long snapped.

“Find him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he hurt, do you think?” Her voice was small. She drew in on herself. I wondered how I had never noticed before that she was such a small woman. To me, she looked like a girl.

“No, not anymore I don't think.” I hoped not.

“Do you... do you think he misses me?”

I held my breath. I let out a long sigh.

“Yes, Lucille. I believe he does.”

Our poor Thomas.

“Oh. Well then, I should go to him.”

She stood, and her face wasn't the ruin I guessed it might be, that I had made of it with that shovel. Instead, it was fine-boned and pale, those great blue eyes wide and always a little wild.

“Why, you're quite old now, Edith.”

“I am,” I said with a slight smile. “Come on, shall we go?”

She walked with me to the front door, and as she stepped into the weak spring sunlight, she started to trickle away. Thomas had gone with his eyes closed, but Lucille went with her eyes open, a look of fierce concentration on her face.

She had no last words for me, but in truth, she had never had any time for me at all. Some things don't change. Some things, locked in darkness and left to wither, cannot change, but perhaps they can leave.

I made my way down to the gates, where the driver came around to open the door for me.

“Light's funny, miss. When I looked up, I thought I saw someone standing with you at the door.”

“No,” I said, leaning back against the seat. “It was only me.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> -My best guess is that the Sharpe family motto, "We raise our eyes to the hills," comes from Psalm 121: " I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?" 
> 
> -This is the best kind of redemption I can come up with for Lucille. I like to think that 40ish years of death would mellow her a bit.
> 
> -My ghosts aren't quite the ghosts seen in the movie. I'm okay with that if you are.
> 
> -Someone please write me a crossover fanfic where Edith Cushing meets Kyle Murchison Booth.


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